Word: toxically
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Last week the court rebuffed both the Administration and the textile manufacturers. In a decision that could have considerable impact on many industries beyond textiles, the court ruled, 5 to 3, that the agency is not required to weigh costs against benefits when setting health standards dealing with toxic materials in the workplace...
...decision was a four-word phrase that Congress used in the 1970 law that OSHA administers. The measure directed the agency to set standards assuring that "to the extent feasible," no worker would suffer material impairment of health from exposure to toxic substances, including cotton dust. By and large, OSHA read the word feasible to mean technologically possible, but the industry argued for a primarily economic definition. Wrote Justice William Brennan for the majority: "Congress itself defined the basic relationship between costs and benefits, by placing the 'benefit' of worker health above all other considerations save those making...
...ruling, while a serious setback for the Reagan Administration's deregulation effort, is far from a death blow. James C. Miller III, who heads a White House deregulation task force, emphasized that the court's decision dealt only with the OSHA statute covering toxic substances. Indeed, Justice Brennan cited several regulatory laws, including ones on the environment, that specifically allow the Government to weigh costs against benefits. Now if the Administration wants to do the same thing with toxic substances in the workplace, it may have no choice but to ask Congress to amend the statute accordingly...
Scientists have linked dioxin, the most toxic element in Agent Orange, to cancer in animals. Researchers in Italy and Viet Nam claim dioxin is tied to birth defects in humans. Veterans also blame the chemical for headaches, sexual dysfunction and organ damage. They say perhaps 80,000 soldiers were exposed to dioxin. The Federal Government says there is no way to tell, although some 45,000 soldiers have been tested and a federally financed study is under way at the University of California at Los Angeles School of Public Health...
Blake and Spielberg caution that this test will not alert investigators to all drugs with the potential for causing birth defects, only to those that form toxic metabolites. But they think their work could help researchers design more reliable experiments. For example, if a test shows that a .particular drug forms a toxic metabolite in humans and rabbits, but not, say, in dogs, then by a process of elimination rabbits would be designated the appropriate species for future birth defect studies related to that drug...